County: Armagh Site name: ARMAGH: Bank of Ireland, Scotch Street
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: C.J. Lynn, Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland
Site type: Church
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 687657m, N 845105m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.347088, -6.651751
While the previous excavation was in progress it was noted that these premises were temporarily unoccupied. Permission was obtained to carry out excavations in the back garden. The Bank is built on the supposed site of temple na Ferta, St Patrick’s reputed first church in Armagh, whose use continued into the historic period and which survived to become a regular medieval religious establishment in the medieval period. One third of the total area available was excavated. No part of an early church was found; this site could lie closer to the line of the present Scotch Street, but sufficient was uncovered to indicate that excavation took place near a medieval religious establishment; several finds and a few features gave evidence for the occupation of this part of the site in the early Christian period but not necessarily earlier than about 800 AD. Two stone-built rectangular-plan wells, now happily conserved and open for inspection (with permission from the owners), testify to the presence nearby of a substantial medieval foundation. One of the wells had in part been back-filled with some rubble from a mortared masonry building. There were no carved stones to give a more precise clue to the date and function of the building but the discovery of two fragments of cut and polished Greek porphyry, one from the other well, testify to the religious connections of the site. From the associated stratified pottery in the well a good case for a 13th-/14th-century deposition date for the larger porphyry fragment can be made; it is possible that these pieces, probably removed from mosaics, were brought back to Armagh as souvenirs by medieval or earlier pilgrims visiting E Mediterranean centres or perhaps even Rome itself. A complex series of ditches was uncovered in the garden, the earliest probably pre-historic and the latest belonging to the late medieval period, dated by the happy discovery near the bottom of its fill of a hoard of over 90 silver coins deposited in the 3rd quarter of the 16th century.